Trance Mix
by Soshika
Summary: why does Kaoru take the view he does of humanity, of life and love? He's certainly an original one. What was he in the years before he became a pilot, and can they maybe explain? [part 3 up]
1. Backbeat

**Disclaimer**: I swear to GOD this will NEVER become a mary sue fic. i intend on actually explaining why Tabris/Kaworu has the slightly...passive view of humans he does via an exploration of his past. There will be NO romance between this character and him. there will be NO saving of her ass by him. i swear to god (read: gainax) that if i EVER do this you can flame the HELL out of me. thank you. -soshika, 10/01/02 at 3.23 AM 

* * *

When the new student entered their class, there wasn't much of a reaction. It was actually fairly normal of late to see new people come and go. Since there were so few kids their age now anyway, most schools were gradually condensing the classes together to conserve space. Some rooms were left like boom towns in the old west of America they read about- completely desolate, chairs and desks stacked in a corner and notes still up on the board, dust filming over everything. 

The school was only three stories to begin with, with fifteen windows facing out on each floor on the front, not counting the glass face where the stairwell up was. It was really a nice place, built in the early eighties. It was right on the outskirts of Otsu, nearby the lake. Back before the Second Impact, people could complain about the sun in their eyes early in the morning. 

With this few people now, they had been able to move the classrooms back away from the rooms that got a glare. There were about thirty students together in this particular class, give or take on any given day. Their teacher also rotated, switching off for various topics. 

During lunch hours, they always had the option of leaving the grounds to go home if it was near enough, or eat anywhere else. 

Juni was one of the girls who didn't go home, and didn't seem to fit in normally. That was acceptable at her age...when you were thirteen you were expected to be rebellious and different. It wasn't that she was exceptional in any way shape or form, or that she was particularly interested in anything. It was just that during lunch hour, she hadn't made any friends she could eat with and prefered to remain alone in the abandoned classroom, her feet propped onto the desk listening to music through her headphones. 

Her older sister had been deeply into the music scene the year before, and Juni followed devoutly like most younger siblings do in denial. So while other girls were discovering their bodies changing or noticing boys, Juni was noticing music. It gained her a reputation as a tomboy, because she wanted to emulate the artists she listened to in mannerism more than she wanted to be a perfect lady. It wasn't unusual for her to be listening with her eyes closed before the class rep would come by with a ruler and smack her on the shins to put her feet down. And by then it was always too late, and Juni had been sitting around with her skirt open and her feet in the air for a few minutes while the the rest of the class had filtered back in with her oblivious. And it would have bothered her too, if she had cared about anything except music. 

And so of course, music really didn't care. 

It was the day the new student came in that she was listening to The Pillows, a fairly newer band that appealed to a more classical rock side of her taste. She'd discovered them the night before and was starting to swim deeper into their music when the door to the classroom opened. Not entirely into her listening trance yet, she hurried to put her feet down and scramble for her books to keep up the facade that she was working. 

Miss Tatakura the languages teacher came in with an armload of books that Juni knew would have been making ruffling and thumping sounds on the desk if she had the volume on her headphones down just a little bit more. It was early for her to be here, the teacher that was, even though langauges was directly after lunch. And so Juni inched forward on her stomach across her desk, turned down the volume on her headphones just a little bit and listened silently. 

"Nagisa-san, you're going to be in class Eight-D with me this afternoon, so you can come in now and get yourself a seat. The other students should be at lunch now, if you want to join them-" 

Tatakura's voice became a low drone that got soaked up by the musical spongue and Juni began to rely more on her eyes to deciefer what was happening. Spilling in from the hallway was a gray shadow, one that held itself irregularly ridgid and skulked in the doorway like a gaki. 

The track on her headphones switched abruptly as he entered. The song was "Runner's High" and the drums took her offguard. She jumped and moved to lower the volume, missing that critical little entrance moment that might have made or broken her as a typical teenaged girl. Already though, the music was filling her with a cheerful enthusiasm that she was certain she would put into greeting this new student, whoever they were, as soon as Tatakura left the room. 

Upon looking up again, she had not only missed the new student's entrance but also his movement from the doorway to the desk he chose, which was far to the opposite wall and in the front. _I reason_, Juni thought to herself against the onslaught of guitars, _That they're the insecure kind. If they're up by Tatakura, they don't really know how to mix in with us. No book to read, no lunch to eat...And the uniform isn't the same either. Not from around here, but deffinitly a weirdo. And that isn't a bad thing- I am too._

The fact that his hair was very obviously a faintly silver white was lost on her, completely unnoticed. 

* * *

**Closing note**: i promise a part that actually INVOLVES him soon. as in like, tomorrow. PLEASE bare with me. 


	2. Characteristic Beat

Languages always went slowest. For the most part, it was because the students were trying to cover two or three seperate languages in one sitting. It was the general conensus of the adults that the more languages their children knew, the better chance they would have of being able to go on with life in a drasticly changed world. On a more paranoid level, it was probably so that they could meet up with kids from anywhere else and have the potential to get into a relationship. Half of the human population and a declining birth rate were leaving the future with a bleak uncertainty.   
  
At the start of class, Tatakura had the new student stand and greet the class, although he didn't seem to have any of the apprehension of other new kids. His accent was strange, and made some of them snicker. A northerner, the new student was introduced as Nagisa Kaworu. He was an albino, which might have been stranger twenty years ago. Albiet, he did stand out like a sore thumb against the rest of the class. Juni could look up from her desk at any point and see him- the white hair was like a beacon across the room in a sea of black.   
  
Nagisa didn't speak, didn't shuffle and didn't call attention to himself in class. People would glance at him whenever a question was asked aloud, expecting some sort of response, but it was as if he'd always been with them. He was just as apatheticly silent as the rest, and paid just as little attention. When Tatakura wasn't watching him, he was looking down at his desk, just like the rest of them.   
  
When the bell finally rang for dismissal, only the students who had cleanup that day would remain, but Juni straggled. Nagisa straggled too, but not in the same way she did. He seemed to have forgotten that class had existed at all.   
  
Slinging her bag across her chest, Juni zig zagged through the desks to where the albino had sat, unmoved, through the last four class periods. Nagisa looked up as she approuched, and although she had expected his eyes to be off colour the deep red struck her as odd...didn't albinos have pinkish eyes? Juni dismissed the thought. Her palm came down on the edge of his desk and she leaned forward, noticing now that Nagisa had been busy all through class...just drawing.  
  
The albino's face remained emotionless, completely flatline as she Juni stood above him. Without even taking his crimsion gaze away, Nagisa moved his hands fluidly, snapping shut his note book and secreting it into the folds of a pack. "Yes?"  
  
Juni smiled, taking her hand off his desk for a very quick informal boy. "I'm Sekai Juni, I just wanted to welcome you to our class."  
  
Nagisa blinked impassively, incomprehensably, the stillness hanging in the air a moment. It was not an awkward wait...but it was a delay. "Why?"  
  
"I saw you come in. And well," Left hand on her hip, Juni jerked a thumb to herself and then pointed to the albino. "You and me? We're the same."  
  
Nagisa arched an eyebrow a moment, a strange faint smile hinting on his lips. "Why do you think that?" The albino's voice was strange- it had a sort of lethargic tone to it that left Juni feeling empty and slightly off center. Juni took a step back as Nagisa stood, finding he was taller than she had initially noticed.   
  
Maybe she was just a naive girl. Maybe it was that Juni was dense, and couldn't take a hint that made it so she didn't step away and leave Nagisa to his own ends. Or maybe it was as she said - they were the same. So instead, Juni stood her ground with her hands on her hips, and did her best to keep an air of superiority. "Haven't you ever just known anything? When you see someone, and you can tell by the way they move that they're like you are?"  
  
"I can't say I have." Nagisa folded his arms, his backpack doubled around his pale right wrist. Something about his demenor was...off, Juni noted to herself. It wasn't sinister or contrived, it was just out of character for the outward appearance of Nagisa. His word's weren't what reflected it so much, she noted, as his movements.   
  
The silence lay between them like a wall again, weighted and thick. And Juni, before she was even aware of the way she thundered through it like an elephant in the forest, was speaking. "You have to see something. Come on." Her hands closed like traps around the albino's exposed wrist, and she began to lead Nagisa.   
  
Surprisingly, he did not resist, but followed instead with a sort of naive curiousity.   
  
*******  
  
  
The roof of the school had never been designed as a place that was accessable to students. There were no basketball courts there, as there were in some of the city schools. There were no gardens for the younger children, no benches to sit on and eat lunch. When the building was first constructed, a guardrail was ordered to be put around the lip of the building, but the workmen found it tedious to get around when working on the sides of the school and so it sat in a rusty, disgarded heap to the side of a domed skylight.  
  
Getting to the roof in and of itself was a challenge. For adults, they still needed to climb on top of an a-frame ladder to pull down the cracked wooden staircase that folded into the ceiling. For the students, like Juni and Nagisa, there was a required teamwork effort.   
  
Under the offcolour square in the ceiling on the top floor, Juni positioned the albino boy specificly. Nagisa didn't make any move of protest, even when she took both his hands and cupped them together in front of his stomach, interlacing the fingers. The thick red colour of his irises seemed to draw the colour from his cheeks- it was as if the albino's eyes themselves were causing his condition.   
  
It bothered Juni just slightly when the new student didn't speak a word as she instructed him on what to do. It wasn't annoyance, but more an alien unfamiliarity. Nagisa seemed to take no real note that what they were doing was out of the ordinary, nor did he question her the entire time. She could never reach the roof alone, and it was always the other students she took who asked her. "Where are we going? Are we supposed to be doing this? Can't we get in trouble?" Her answer, like a music box when it was opened, was always the same. To put on her headphones, and continue to lead them.   
  
But Nagisa had never asked. It wasn't that he came off as timid, or submissive. His height alone dispelled those thoughts. He wasn't just quiet, he was devoid. It was as if Nagisa wasn't even with her at all.   
  
"Stand just like that," Juni instructed, her hands on his shoulders as she gave him a slight shake. "And don't look up my skirt."  
  
"Why would I?" Nagisa's voice was blank, without emotion surprise or question. Juni gave a slight sound of disgust and put a foot into his cupped hands, clamping onto his shoulders and hoisting herself up.   
  
She was light, which she was thankful for, because it meant that every time she did this she could be the one entrusted with retreiving the ladder. Her knees wobbled as she took hold of the dangling string in the center of the discoloured spot, Nagisa looking with his head upturned and his expression impassive.   
  
Fist clenched onto the ratty peice of string, Juni jumped back out of Nagisa's hands and landed on the floor with a sharp clacking, her uniform shoes taking the abuse with auidable protest. The ladder came creaking away from the ceiling, its steps unfolding into the sky like a dragon's maw. Juni stepped back from the rear of the ladder and smiled through the workmen's steps at the albino.   
  
Nagisa's stare was only curious confusion.   
  
With a sigh of frustration, Juni faced the fact that the new student was either socially inept beyond belief or mentally short in one way or another. Swinging on the unsanded stairs, she slipped once on the polished tiles of the school and regained her balance before catching onto Nagisa's bird-white hand.   
  
She didn't grin as she pulled the albino up the steps, eyes locked on his. Nagisa was dragged behind her, but it was like leading a child and not forcing a man.   
  
Shoes crunched on the tar-stuck gravel of the rooftop as Juni scrambled to pull shut the wooden staircase behind them, her school uniform scuffed and wrinkled from the climb. She was glad, she realized when the staircase groaned shut, that it was the end of the day and she wouldn't have to return to class and explain her appearance. Straightening, she turned to find Nagisa standing at the rim of the rooftop, looking down the five stories to the ground below. A light updraft caught his grey-white hair and ruffled it, causing Jumi to subconciously catch her own hair between two fingers and hold it still.   
  
"Is this what you wanted me to see?" The albino boy's hands delved into the pockets, a stark contrast on the dark fabric of his pants. As always, his voice was unidentifiable. There was an emotion to it, but not one Juni could readily identify. Taking a step back from the rim, Nagisa's ruby eyes rested on Juni.   
  
She did not feel uneasy. He was taller than her, a boy. She knew nothing about him, because he was new. Everything about him was strange and misplaced, but not in a grotesque way. Nagisa was not a wolf- he was more akin to a stray cat that had wandered into her house looking for food. Juni couldn't help herself, and smiled at him. "Not just that. Look out there." She pointed towards the sun, which was crawling lower in the sky as the afternoon edged towards its close.   
  
Nagisa's head turned, his feet following with an exaggerated slowness. "It looks like a temple on the hillside. Are you religious?"   
  
"No, but did you know this is a haven for the buddists?"  
  
His back to her, Nagisa seemed to float like a ghost on the edge of the building. His voice carried away from her and into the distance, making it all the harder to hear what he said. "I don't see what this has to do with me."  
  
Juni felt her shoes scraping on the rough surface of the rooftop as she moved to stand beside the albino. Truthfully, the rooftop made her giddy, its height a rarely treated drug for her to indulge in. Her voice reflected this, sounding airy. "When the buddists came here, I think they got a feeling. Something inside them said that this place was where they needed to be, where they needed to converge. Back over a thousand years ago, this was even the capital of Japan. It just felt right, people just knew that this was where to build a city and rule from." Juni's hands were clasped at her back, and she gazed on Nagisa'as face. He hadn't changed expressions. "I know it's hard for you to be in a new school, I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone. I've got a feeling about you."  
  
"It feels strange," The albino spoke at length, eyes moving over the landscape with the naivite of first-time sight. "I've never thought of myself as being like anyone before. Yet you said we were alike."  
  
Juni nodded, watching the last straggling students leave through the great double doors far below. "You just don't know how to open up to others. You'd make a lot of friends if you'd try."  
  
"I don't understand," Nagisa knelt, curling until he was seated on the rooftop with his feet dangling over the side. Hands clasped in his lap, free of the pockets and locked together. "Why should I need friends?"  
  
Juni's face melted into laughter as she slouched down to sit beside him, her legs kicking as they hung over the edge. "They sure are strange up north. Does everyone there talk like you do?"  
  
"No."  
  
"At least you're not snide when you speak. But you want friends so you're not alone," She grinned, hands splaying out behind her on the rough gravel as she leaned back. Every one of the small rocks was like a tooth gnawing at her palm, but everything about the roof was special, and she relished it. "Nobody likes being on their own. So start out by smiling." Juni's face turned towards the albino and she grinned, a demonstration.   
  
"It's just a way of showing joy, that's it?" Nagisa looked at her a moment before returning his eyes to the all encompasing landscape. "It seems strange to me, that's why I don't do it often."  
  
Shaking her head, Juni paused to hold a strand of dark hair back from between her eyes. "No, it's not just for that. It means you're at peace."  
  
"Peace?"  
  
"The monks, out there, like I was talking about before? They smile all the time. They're very wise."  
  
Nagisa's eyes slitted very slightly, the red seeming to thicken as he did so. "But they don't know everything, do they?"  
  
"Of course not. Maybe they also smile because they know that."  
  
Deep crimsion pools opened against the ivory face as Nagisa watched the unmoving temple in the distance. Very slowly, like incoming tide, his lips moved upwards. The smile was so distinctive, like the albino's voice. It was an emotion, but an unnamed one.   
  
Juni could only laugh in response, because something so original could never be seen again. The girl climbed to her feet, dusting the loose gravel on her hands against her skirt. The pebbles fell and skittered on the rooftop, but she took no notice.   
  
"So where do you live? I'll walk home with you." 


	3. You like Bass boom boom?

**Note**- kaworu makes a reference to juni's name being a joke in this part. the joke is that 'juniboku' is a term for course naivite, such as a country hick would have. boku is a word used for refering to the self sometimes in japanese, and juni is the girl's name. thus, juniboku is a pun.

* * *

_I have been here for my lifetime, and I have decided that there must be an ideal world. To be in that ideal world. I would be a dust mote. _

You see, in being a dust mote, you can have no emotions. Dust knows no hate and no predjudice, it has no desire to kill. It is only dust. It can be swept up, thrown away, vaccuumed. But it never ceases to exist. Were I dust, I would laugh every time someone tried to be rid of me. Because when you are dust, you can not be destroyed. Only moved from one place to another. 

Perhaps if I am given an option in the ideal world, I will choose to be one of the dust motes that hangs in the sun. I'll never land, at least when you're looking. And I'll never be caught. If someone tried to swipe me out of the air, I'd move around like motes always do, and so they could never touch me. 

If dust could smile, I would smile and hang in the sun. 

I believe if I were dust, so would everyone else. Maybe we already are, some tiny spec of dust in a giant sunbeam. That's our entire world, you see. And it can't be destroyed, only moved around. 

If the Buddists do not know everything, maybe they do know this. If I do, they must. 

In this, I derive my knowledge... 

"If someone isn't smiling, do they have all the answers?" 

Kaworu had tried to split away from Juni when they had crept down from the roof, prepared to find his own way home. The girl was persistant. He had gotten aproximately fifteen feet away from her before Juni remembered she was on a mission from God to remove his quiet exterior. 

To her credit, the albino didn't mind Juni's presence or her voice, and the things she talked insecently about had a certain appeal to him. They paced side by side now, the school gradually receeding as their feet ate up the sidewalk. 

She wasn't especially distinctive, Juni Sekai. In a crowd, there was no way Nagisa could have picked her out if he had needed to. People blended together for him, merged and became a singular entity with no unique features. Even the genders seemed to become one. It was what they showed of how their minds worked that mattered. And when Juni opened her mouth, Kaworu listened. 

"What?" The girl swiped a hand at her hair again, despite the fact it was not in her face. "Oh...deffinitly not. I can't speak for everyone in the world," When she spoke, Nagisa saw that she kept her eyes on the sky. Were there answers for her? "But I think it's because they know they don't know everything. It's just that they can't stand that thought." 

"What does that do to them?" 

"You're a strange creature," Juni grinned at him, flashing a row of slick white teeth. Her eyes flashed upwards again, Nagisa wondered again. Then they were on the sidewalk. "They become bitter, and cynical. There's too many people like that." 

Nagisa felt himself smiling again, the slight muscle movements pleasent and alien. "You didn't want that to happen to me." 

"_I_ don't want it to happen to _anyone_." 

"May I ask you a question, Juni?" His tone, as always, was soft and drifting. He'd learned fairly early on in life that with no emotion at all, people would shun him. The unwaivering choice he had made had worked in all situations thus far. 

"Ee, you're welcome to." 

"Your name," Nagisa looked skyward, following Juni's gaze. He felt no answers, and no different than he had always felt. But he was not her. "Is it a joke?" 

"What?" 

"A joke. Was it supposed to be funny?" 

"Oh," She laughed to herself. The albino watched her carefully as she spoke. "I get it...No, it's my nickname." 

He felt his chest vibrating, clicking, mirroring her laughter. Like the smile, it felt natural. It was the sense, Nagisa got the impression, of being perpetually caught above the ground in the sun. It was as near as he could tell, like being a dust mote. His laugh was distinctive, quiet and small. Sad too, although that he could not hear. 

"What's so funny?" Juni leaned forward as she walked, her steps changing to an almost comical stiff-kneed clopping. "What is it?" 

"The name," Nagisa kept his eyes ahead as he spoke. "Juniboku? It's suited to you." 

The girl glared at him dangerously as they walked, but said nothing. Was it that she was genuinely offended, or was she overreacting intentionally? Nagisa slowed his pace and stopped laughing, his face reverting to the emotionless continance of before. For a moment, he was worried that the dark haired girl might turn on him and start a fight, but then Juni intook a long breath of air and seemed to be over it. She, Kaworu decided, was a very strange creature. 

"So you live this far on the edge of town? You really are like one of those monks," Juni had finally begun to notice that they were moving to where the sidewalk would eventually end, and the trees, although stunted badly, were more frequent and less orderly. 

"It was what I was given, I don't mind," Kaworu smiled faintly and crossed Juni's path, causing her to trip over her own feet and glare at him again. This time, he took no notice at all. Off the sidewalk and through some of the runt trees as a thin overgrown driveway that he began to follow. "It's nice to be able to relax quietly." 

The scratching sound of Juni's school shoes on the dirt and gravel drive was angry, irregular. She was stomping, and probably going to let loose a barrage of insults that so fitted her nickname. Nagisa could feel her behind him now, feel the air ruffle slightly against his hair as she raised her hand to begin talking. 

Juni's hand stopped in midair. Her steps were halted, her attention fixated ahead, and the albino who had nearly tripped her was all but forgotten as he continued to move forward. 

The girl stared, struck silent. 


End file.
